Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

pushed me from the edge of the boat so that I had no choice. I flew. The rain was heavy, and hard, and it thumped at me so strong I thought I would sink, but I flew as best I could through it, searching for cover. There were the canopies of trees nearby, and I used them for shelter. I found a branch lower down, where I could still see our boat. There were men on it. I could make out their silhouettes. And I could see Pig, too. He was fighting them. Trying to spear them on his tusks. But the men had sticks that flashed with electricity. Cattle prods, I thought. And they struck at him again and again until he stopped moving.” Her words slowly turn to heaving sobs. “And then they dragged him onto their yacht, and sailed away with him.”

“Did you follow them?” asks Crow.

“I couldn’t.” Butterfly weeps. “The rain was too heavy. I couldn’t fly, and I didn’t know how to sail Pig’s boat. I had to wait so long for it to stop raining. It took hours and hours. And when I got back onto the boat, I couldn’t call anyone because the phone lines were dead. I waited and I waited, not sure what to do, until the rains cleared up enough and I could come and find you. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Crow rifles through her bag and retrieves her phone, jabbing at it and scowling at the lack of reception. The birds that scattered at the sound of the gunshot are already beginning to return to the village. They flap from the heights of the sky and come to rest on rooftops. Adam watches them, letting his mind turn over.

The boat rocks slightly as Crab pulls himself back aboard, grinning triumphantly. The bunting that had been bound around the boat’s motor is now bound around him instead, tiny colourful flags hanging from his weathered limbs. His stony smile fades as he takes in the boat’s new occupant. “What did I miss?”

“We’ve got to go north,” says Adam.

“What’s happened?”

“Someone’s taken Pig,” says Adam, remembering, so clearly, the yacht parked outside the Sinclairs’ house, casting its shadow and blocking out the sun: a memory so stark in his mind that it surprises him with its clarity. “I know who took him. And I know where they’ve taken him.”

XII

There was once a flood so bad that Adam and Eve had to build a boat.

They were living up in the Atlas mountains at the time, and the heavy rainfall took them both by surprise. The country they were living in was not known for such storms. Yet the rains kept coming, and the waters kept rising, and before long Adam and his children were dragging as much timber as they could into the higher reaches of the mountains, where Eve and villagers from all across the local area began to build. Eventually, the waters rose high enough that they covered the forests, and Adam was reduced to paddling over to uprooted trunks and guiding them back to the steadily ascending shoreline. All manner of creatures, great and small, emerged from the lowlands and retreated up the mountainsides, and among them were some of Eden’s creatures, dispossessed of the garden but still as striking as the day they were made. Eve’s construction grew larger and larger, until it was big enough to accommodate all the villagers, and all of their children, and all of Eden’s creatures, and even some of the local animals. A great ramp was left open in the base of the boat, and everyone walked, and crawled, and slithered on board, in a great stream of living things that continued until the floods grew too high. Then Adam and Eve sealed the ship, and all inside sat tight, waiting for the rains to stop. They had to stop eventually, after all.

Outside the sky was always dark, as if night would never end, and rain drummed constantly against the roof of the boat. But inside there was warmth, and community, and though quarrels inevitably arose, and living things consumed each other as they were wont to do, the quarrels were brief, and what few deaths there were never seemed gratuitous. The boat was heaved from its scaffolding, and floated across the furious floods, and Adam and Eve did their very best to make sure that everyone inside was comfortable and secure.

During the worst days of the storm, when Adam started to lose track of the passing of time, and everyone on board the boat was stricken with fear, he began to hear laughter outside. The laughter was intermittent, and chattering, and he would wander the hull and press his ear against it, trying to determine the source. The rains drummed their endless rhythm across the roof, and the muttering of all the people and creatures inside the boat was constant, and the laughter continued, drifting in from different parts of the boat. On the worst day of all, when the boat rocked deliriously from side to side, and the laughter coming from outside seemed endless, Adam unsealed the door and went out on deck, gripping hold of the sodden ropes he and Eve had secured all around the ship. The storm raged at him, and thunder rolled, and lightning shattered the waves that surrounded the boat, and he stumbled, slipping and sliding across the deck, in search of the laughter.

All around the ship, there was nothing but water and waves. And in a flash of lightning, Adam finally saw the source of the laughter. It was a bird, perched on the railing at the edge of the ship, splaying its black-and-white wings for balance, its claws buried deep in the splintering wood. Of course, Adam knew who it was. He should have recognised the croaking. It was Magpie; Eden’s own Magpie, flicking his wings at the furious heavens and laughing at the